Today’s culture is a major contributor to Psychological illness rising to epidemic proportions. There are multiple factors that seem to emerge as we quick-scan our culture.
Here are my top 7 cultural observations;
1. More Stress (Trickle-down)
While part of our stress is self-caused. The majority of it, is trickle-down stress. The unmet hopes and aspirations of an earlier generation (within the family context) are ruthlessly off-loaded on the current, by default. The ‘stress baton’ is passed on and there seems to be no choice or respite from this relay. Helicopter parenting, is a classic case in point, destroying young lives, which are already squirming under their own weight. More so, in our honour-shame culture.
2. More Stimulus
While part of our stress is self-caused. The majority of it, is trickle-down stress. The unmet hopes and aspirations of an earlier generation (within the family context) are ruthlessly off-loaded on the current, by default. The ‘stress baton’ is passed on and there seems to be no choice or respite from this relay. Helicopter parenting, is a classic case in point, destroying young lives, which are already squirming under their own weight. More so, in our honour-shame culture.
3. More Uncertainty
We live in very uncertain times. Thanks to global geo-political uncertainty, financial melt-down, communal violence, religious conflicts, epidemic out-breaks, corrupt leaders, etc. the average person today, is very uncertain of the future. Vacuous promises, by pseudo-messiah’s don’t add up to anything, anymore. Ubermensch and Utopia are comic content today! So what the common man is left with is uncertainty and loads of it, with no Redeemer in sight.
4. More problem-oriented thinking
Our culture today fosters problem-oriented thinking. Simply because we have problem oriented professions that train and demand us to think in such ways. Think about it! From Medicine to Jurisprudence, Teaching to Technology, we present ourselves as solution providers. Solution providers, need to primarily be problem-spotters. Ace problem-spotting is a pre-requisite for problem-sorting. So problem-oriented thinking is celebrated in a perpetually trouble-shooting, fire-fighting society. And we don’t know how to leave most of it at our doorsteps and end-up caressing it into our living rooms.
5. More Worry
Worry is by no means a modern predicament. Two millennia ago Jesus thought it crucial to address this and inserted it in his epic discourse – Sermon on the Mount. Given the fabric of our culture, we worry more. Given the context, it only seems fair.
“Don’t worry, be happy” Bobby McFerrin’s 1989 Grammy winning song refrain, “In every life we have some trouble, but when you worry you make it double, don’t worry, be happy, don’t worry, be happy now”, seems to be getting the diagnosis right, but his antidote is clearly unhinged. Sure enough, three decades down the line, the mantra hasn’t worked much!
We need good reasons to convert our worries into happiness (joy, rather) and we need a worldview or a frame of reference, that supplies the rationale for meaningfully doing so. Think about it;
The more we worry, the more we worry,
The less we worry, we worry – Worry!
6. More Fear
The list of phobias today is ever expanding as new ones are reported and named ever so often. We live in a ‘labels generation’. We feel secure when something identified is labelled and categorized. Thanks to our problem-oriented thinking, that is ever vigilant to spot any unnamed sign/symptom and label it.
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is one of the longest words in the dictionary and ironically, is the name for a fear of long words! The rational and irrational fears today seem to have found fertile feeding ground in today’s uncertain, worry infested, volatile, hyper-stimulated culture.
Cyberchondria is the modern day techno-version of the ‘Intern’s (Second-year) Syndrome’ that medical and health-care students used to experience earlier. They at least had the academic scaffolding to process it better and had teachers/mentors to walk them back to reality. But with Dr.Google and WebMD, not to forget, Drs.Alexa and Siri, the woes are only multiplied many times over and the lay user of these services has no means to filter and discern, but is hurled into an endless hole of fear and confusion.
I just got a little cheeky and ran a search –“fever+rashes+vomiting”, and bingo, I’m generously bestowed with “Meningitis”.
Never Google your symptoms!
7. Low Resilience
A glance at our parents, a glimpse at ourselves and a gentle look at our children – a quick scan across three generations, would immediately bring to fore the ‘Resilience index’ of each generation. Our parents were warriors, in their own right, that braced themselves against the harshest of odds. We are worriers, even with relatively better resources. Our children sadly, are anxiety-laden and panic-stricken.
Resilience sounds like an archaic word from a bygone era. TED talks on ‘Endurance and Toughness’ seems like the need of the hour. Resilience, Conviction, Resolve, Grit, Guts and Mettle seem to be virtues that need to be reiterated and reinstated.
The Bible uses the word ‘Endurance’ to communicate the idea of ‘Resilience’. James 1:2-4, captures this profoundly, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you are involved in various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. But you must let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.”
We need worriers to become warriors!
8. Lost Hope
Hope is in rare-supply. Understandably so! Hope can’t be conjured up from thin air. Hope needs solid grounding. Hope needs a point of reference out of itself, else we’d be hoping on hope and that would amount to self-deceit and ultimately disaster. The very thing, it is to deliver us from.
Therefore, hope needs to look for a source outside of itself. Hope needs to latch itself onto an unshakeable point of reference, an unquenchable real source.
In the words of RC Sproul, “Hope is called the anchor of the soul (Hebrews 6:19), because it gives stability to the Christian life. But hope is not simply a ‘wish’ (I wish that such-and-such would take place); rather, it is that which latches on to the certainty of the promises of the future that God has made.”
The Cross of Christ, which points to the Person and the work of Jesus Christ is the Hope for this World seeped in despair and gloom.
